On all platforms (Linux, Windows 7 or greater, and MacOS X), we recommend a
preassembled scientific python distribution, such as Continuum IO’s Anaconda or Enthought’s Canopy. These collections already
include compatible (and in some cases accelerated) versions of most of
PySIT’s dependencies. Download and follow the appropriate instructions for
your operating system/distribution.

On Linux systems, you can also install Python and (many of) the dependencies
from your package manager. For dependencies that are not available, you can
download them and install them from source.

PySIT uses setuptools for
packaging and is configured to automatically download and install the most
up-to-date version of its dependencies from PyPI, if a satisfactory version is not already
installed.

PySIT uses C++ extensions, so you will need a functioning C++ compiler to
install from source. For Windows users, if you are using one of the pre-built
scientific Python distributions, one should be included, otherwise you will
need to install an approprate version of MinGW. MacOS X users will need to
install XCode.

This section assumes that you have a version of Mercurial (hg) installed for your operating system.
Mercurial is a distributed version control system (DVCS). For an
introduction to Mercurial and DVCS, see hginit.